Reducing water consumption

One of the things we’re not particularly good at here at Chez Green is reducing water consumption.

I hate to admit it, but because we’re not metered, we tend to take what we want.

Little Miss Green’s showers are usually a shocking 20 minutes long. I’m tapping my foot wondering how much electricity she’s using, but of course she’s using an awful lot of water too.

I hear Mr Green leaving the tap running when he brushes his teeth. I’ve had a word with him on several occasions, but old habits die hard, right?

One area we are quite good with is not flushing the toilet unless necessary. However, we were away on holiday last week and had low-flow toilets. I was amazed how quickly they were ready for action again because they used so little water to fill!  I figured I could probably flush one of those every time and still not use as much water as we do only flushing ours a couple of times a day.

The other area where we are good is with gathering rain water. We have four rain barrels (all recycled juice containers) in the garden and we use these to feed the animals and water the plants.

This week, for our ‘Change the World Wednesday‘ challenge, we’ve been asked to reduce our water consumption and encourage other people to do the same. However, it would be a bit of a ‘do as a I say and not as I do’ scenario.

I’m not really sure what I can do about it. Little Miss Green claims she can’t go any quicker in the shower, Mr G refuses to turn off the tap when brushing his teeth and I do like my baths at the end of a busy day.

One thing I am going to look into is a low flow toilet. I was so impressed with the way these worked on holiday that it has to be worth considering. I’ve heard on the grapevine that every house in the UK will soon be on  a water meter, so if I don’t sort this through wanting to do the right thing, I know I’ll soon be doing it to save money.

What about you – are you good with water consumption habits or is there room for improvement?